Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1, codenamed Namoroka (after the Namoroka National Park in Madagascar), was released as a nightly download yesterday on the 7th August 2009.

This latest developer test version of the popular browser, based on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform, offers increased support for CSS3, most notably background-size, CSS gradients, multiple background images along with support for the rem unit from the CSS3 values and units module.

Perhaps foreshadowed by Google’s adoption of HTML 5, Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out late last week; the future of XHTML 2 is no more. Obviously the selectors we use in CSS 3 depend on the underlying markup we work with, so this news is very interesting and we think timely. As CSS 3 support inches forward with each browser release and as JavaScript libraries supplement poor browser behavior, the need for web developers and enthusiasts to be able to focus their attention has become a paramount concern.

Mozilla employee John Daggett has provided some try‐out builds of Firefox with support for the @font-face from CSS3’s web-fonts module. Currently available for Windows and Mac only—no Linux build yet—there remain several caveats as described in his comment on bug 70132, the most important of which being that the same‐site origin restriction is turned on by default, which means that most examples on the web will not work until you turn it off.

As you can’t have failed to notice, Google released their Chrome browser today. Chrome is based on the same version of Webkit as Safari 3.1 so should in theory have the same level of CSS support, although based on the very brief usage I’ve had of it so far it seems that text-shadow and @font-face aren’t working.

Update: I should add, of course, that this is still Beta software, and these issues may well be fixed before launch.

A first Alpha of Mozilla’s new browser is due for release shortly (probably tomorrow). Firefox 3 saw a lot of work go into speed, stability and the interface, but was slightly disappointing for front-end developers and saw CSS implementation overtaken by Safari and Opera.

3.1 will make up for that with a whole raft of features on their way. Implemented in the current nightlies (and therefore, most likely, in the Alpha) are:

Download a copy today and take a look at some of the examples on our Preview pages. I’ve just noticed that the background-size example doesn’t work, but that seems to be our implementation at fault, not theirs.